Hedi Slimane Quotes

I'm so personally attached to all the characters I met and photographed over the years ... the anthology is like a photographic reliquary that could potentially preserve their grace, fierce joy, and restlessness.

I presume my work has also always been about reduction without any distraction or after effects, outside emotions, or intimacy or complicity with the subject ...

The framework of men's wear is so narrow, that when you play at the edges you get labeled.

I like the idea of paradox, between the authentic fabrics and sophisticated shapes and between masculine and feminine. I'm not so much for sportswear. I think it's over.

I like the ritual, the liturgy of a well-crafted, emotional fashion show. I will never be jaded with this side of fashion. The catwalk is pure anthropology, something like an esoteric encrypted parade. It can totally be replaced but it will be missed.

Men's fashion has a certain heaviness in the fabrics and construction. But also there is a heaviness in the mentality.

Photography has always been about documentary, the depiction of the instant, a moment, sometimes a place. Each project is somehow an experimentation of a specific context or a character.

Sex is not a subject in my photographs, or would only be if it had to do with romance, sometimes vulnerability. The photographs are quite clearly about happiness, or search for happiness.

I love California. It has such a strong contribution to the history of culture, and popular culture. For better and worse, of course. Even the worst can be interesting to some degree sometimes for somebody creative.

[It's] not one thing this year, one thing another year.

I always loved designing, but the context needs to be right, and have a positive perspective.

Just like zillions of children, album covers educated and informed me, and certainly did I later transpose organically, rather than by intent, those principles both in fashion design and photography.

I'm going to design again, but I come back when it's the right project, so I keep my passion for it intact.

Music has shaped men's fashion, and transposed in a playful and witty manner its riding or military heritage. It is difficult to figure out who leads, but music and fashion are connected genetically.

Men are not supposed to be mysterious. That's what you say about women. But I think men can have a little of it, too.

I have a great admiration and tenderness for Azzedine Alaia. I haven't seen him in a while, but I guess he must be still sewing some dresses at night.

I'd like men to think about evolving into something more sophisticated, more seductive. To explore the possibility of an entirely new masculinity.

Hedi was and is still misspelled 'Heidi,' and my perception of genders ended up slightly out of focus from an early age.

Fashion somehow, for me, is purely and happily irrational.

Haute couture is a legitimate subject for Yves Saint Laurent and could resume one day.

Mostly the subject of the photograph, which can be anyone really, coming down the street - someone that has no idea. "Heroism" in photography, just like in a novel, is for everyone.

I like it to stay very organic, and to remember a personal story behind all my subjects.

I shared this idea that fashion starts with a movement, an allure: elusive, defined through perfect proportions.

David Bowie, for me, was the butchest guy in town. Jagger was like a truck driver.

I'm most interested in that moment when my entire perspective changes, and I have to reconsider everything.

I discovered Los Angeles in the late '90s. The city was not at its best at the time, but I fell for it right away. There is something almost haunted about it, a vibrant mythology I find rather inspiring.

An athletic man, or whatever you want to call him, will only look good in a very classic suit, a pair of classic jeans, athletic clothes or simply naked. Forget fashion. This is not going to happen, unless you want to look like a Chippendales dancer in designer clothes.